Film Music vs. Concert Music: Prelude
- September 17th, 2010
- Posted in Film . Music . Writing
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I have to admit, I’m often thinking about film music versus concert music. As an aspiring film music journalist, of sorts, I think about it from a number of angles: the concert/classical influence on film music; the seeming snobbery from the high-browed classical orchestrati towards film music; why I prefer film scores to concert works; and, of course, the issue of good old plagiarism.
As a writer, I am trying to reach out to people beyond the film score bubble and preach the gospel of film music. But I constantly feel the need to defend it as a legitimate art form; I am always conscious of the demons (real or imagined) who claim that film music is nothing but a cheap, commercial, knock off of “real” orchestral music.
The fact is, I love good concert music. I adore the music of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Rimsky-Korsakov (notice a pattern?). Wagner, Brahms, Vaughan Williams, Debussy…all geniuses in my book. I tend to stay away from the earlier classical and baroque composers; too much stuffy form or mathematical precision. I also abhor just about anything considered “modern”—serialism, atonality, and all that cerebral nonsense. Give me the romantics, with their respectful look back at the vocabulary of classicalism, but infused with a wild passion and the emotional might of a full symphonic orchestra.
Here’s the thing, though. For me, the best of the concert world generally has one thing in common: it reminds me of film music. A memorable theme, slowly and ingeniously developed. A gentle, lilting passage that communicates love (or home, or pain) more effectively than any word. Something exotic from another land (like the brilliant Scheherazade) that transports and immerses. But always, some kind of coherent narrative told through the deliberate use of instruments and themes or motifs.
I realize that, technically, it ought to be the other way around. Great film music is reminiscent of great concert works, since in nearly every case the latter preceded the composition of the former. (The crankiest of cynics would simply say that good film music is wholesale pillaging of great concert music; I’m saving my thoughts on that matter for another essay.)
What I’m driving at is, my favorite kind of concert music has a quality that good film music has inherently: it tells a story. So many symphonies (and concert works in general) seem to wander, spastically coughing up a melody line here or an instrumental interplay there. I know that in the works of great classical composers, there are almost always highlights and interesting moments sprinkled throughout. But so often the whole feels disjointed and haphazard. Concert music speaks to me only when it tells some kind of story.
I will address this great showdown again—in more detail and from different angles—but for now I’d love any astute observations or comments from the gallery.
My comment from the gallery is that you are a fantastic writer!
The end.
@Kimberly Ego…temporarily…sated…
Next!
Allow me to echo Kimberly’s sentiments.
I’m afraid I have nothing astute to share, but I do have to ask: when music tells you a story, how do you experience it? As an expansively realized narrative à la Fantasia? Or perhaps as a more inchoate mingling of imagery and emotion?
@Alan
That’s a great and stimulating question, Alan. I’m not an active daydreamer, so I don’t usually experience a Fantasia-like story in my head while listening to music. Although, sometimes my imagination is triggered enough by music to produce some kind of literal story, or at least a progression of images or action.
I guess, for me, the music is itself a kind of story. The only way I know how to measure or explain this is, it moves me from one place to another. I am not static while I listen to it. Whereas I am indifferent and unmoved by the kind of wandering music I mentioned above, my head or my heart (preferably the latter) are taken captive by great music, and moved. Taken quite literally, “moved” means being transported from one place to another. This is what I mean by story. Obviously stories can have much greater detail and nuance—characters and plots, twists and turns. But, at their core, stories work when they immerse us in another world or move us from where we are to somewhere else.
Or maybe that’s all just a bunch of psychobabble.
I confess I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “being transported from one place to another” through music, but the notion of music in and of itself as story is an interesting one.
For me, unless a narrative is explicitly delineated through accompanying visuals, music rarely awakens my inner storyteller. I apprehend music primarily as emotion, as a kind of visceral ebb and flow not readily amenable to verbal or pictorial expression.
Having said that, I freely allow that a more solid musicological appreciation of what I’m listening to might yield a more coherent conception of where the music is going and how I might follow.
@Alan
I’m not sure a stronger grounding in musicology would necessarily enhance your appreciation of my personal and probably idiosyncratic taste in music. It’s definitely an emotional, visceral thing for me also. This idea of music “telling a story” is still a rather vague one, and doesn’t necessarily produce anything more distinct than the ebb and flow you mentioned. There are rarely concrete plots, characters, or dialogue conjured when I’m listening to the music I love.
Music written in the western tradition is typically “goal-oriented,” which implies a kind of beginning-middle-end, story-like structure. On top of that, as I heard a musician comment recently, a melody is a story. So really, at the core, I find story in any strong, goal-oriented structure that prominently features a memorable melody. Whether that story is compelling or touching is definitely up to the individual piece. But my complaint with a lot of concert music is that memorable melodies are less prominent than with good film music, and the structure is often obscured in favor of a more loose, “organic” flow.
Alright, now I’m just rambling…
Formal musical training is obviously not a universal prerequisite to appreciating music as story, but a strong grounding in musicology is helpful in ascertaining the structure of a piece of music. If music, as you suggest, is itself a kind of story, then an understanding of how the composer tells the story is intrinsic to a full appreciation of the story itself.